Grant Jacobs wrote:
As I said, I don't think "make" is a good thing to think of for a *normal* Pascal programmer. We're, of course, deep in the internals, but a normal programm doesn't want to (and shouldn't have to) think about when a compiler recreates which files. It should just produce a correct executable.
You could try keep it all within gpc as so not to generate another name that could conflict. Make gpc itself a small program that manages whatever programs do the actual work.
That's what the program in question ("GP") actually is. (So, as I suggested, we could rename the existing gpc executable and call this one gpc. But I'm not sure yet, because it is an incompatible change ...)
Have users pass options to this to invoke the appropriate action either as a '-' option, e.g.
gpc -make <file(s)>
gp file
or take it a bit further in the spirit of make install, make clean:
gpc compile <options>
gp -c file
gpc link <options>
gp file
gpc clean <options>
gp --clean file
It's all there.
Of course, if one wants to build external stuff (manuals etc.), this is not covered (and shouldn't be IMHO). One should use a real make then (which can invoke "gp" in turn).
Frank